


life for life. death for death. you for me.

by kwritten



Category: Roswell (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sole Survivor, F/M, Non-Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 08:57:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4600740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She fits inside of him like a glove. He’s read enough of the paperback novels with pirates on the cover she leaves all around her apartment to know that it should be the other way around, that he should be the invading force, inserting himself into her and opening her up. She fits right inside of him, head nestled against his throat, knees pressed against his groin, toes tickling his shins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	life for life. death for death. you for me.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [happyg_rl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/happyg_rl/gifts).



He never thought he’d be the last one left, that they’d all do the asshole thing and leave him behind. Of course, when he really started thinking about it, that was the only way this could actually happen. It wasn’t like he was the sacrificial type, the kind to throw down his life on the line to save them all. On a sliding scale of _who is most likely to be a martyr_ , he was always at the bottom. 

He needs new friends, is the problem.

Good thing they’re all gone, now he can go on and be the savior for a while. He’s watched them long enough, surely he knows how to be a self-righteous pain in the ass, throw himself in front of a few bullets, kiss his ass goodbye. 

(Not like he didn’t try. A thousand times he tried.  
He’s just not as good at dying as they are.)

(Were.)

In school, he always struggled with the past tense. He couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that things _end_. They probably sent notes home about it. Isabelle tutored him, he figured it out. He saw the sand blow by and it started to make sense. 

Guess the universe decided that he needed a better lesson. 

He hides himself in the bowels of one city or another, floating through like he had any right at all to exist, disappearing in the morning like a bad dream. (Maybe that’s all he ever was.) 

 

_Her hair isn’t curly and after a while he stops being surprised by that. It’s dark and sometimes hangs in her face and her voice is the same but doesn’t quite sound right, rough around the edges, or softer in the middle, or something else he can’t quite define. She fits inside of him like a glove. He’s read enough of the paperback novels with pirates on the cover she leaves all around her apartment to know that it should be the other way around, that he should be the invading force, inserting himself into her and opening her up. She fits right inside of him, head nestled against his throat, knees pressed against his groin, toes tickling his shins. She makes him watch Star Wars (he’s always avoided stories about the stars) and he jokes that if she wanted, she could slice him down the middle and crawl inside of him to keep warm. _

_It would be funny if it wasn’t true._

 

He likes jobs that allow him to keep moving, roaming, restless. There’s nothing to run from anymore, no one is looking for him. He’s running from his own shadow now. He knows that’s stupid. There’s nothing to run back to, so he chases his tail and calls it productive. He works in bars as bartenders for a week or a month or a season. Women fall in love with him, men invite him to barbeques. He’s damned likable. He moves on. 

He likes places that are dark and smell like sweat and stale beer and have a slight sense of stickiness to their surfaces. They feel like home. They feel like what he probably deserves. 

Hell isn’t dying, hell is the sticky bar you lean your elbows on when you are the only one who survives to drink that celebratory beer in the morning. 

Of course he sees her for the first time surrounded by shiny, clean chrome and glass, the sun in her hair. Of course everything changes in the light and it feels like everything is going back to the beginning. 

 

_She likes to stand on his toes when they argue, leaning her chin against his chest and wrapping her arms around his waist, looking up at him with her large, sad eyes. She can’t help being sad no matter how much he makes her laugh. In the beginning, he fought tooth and nail to be the damaged one, to be the dark one, to be the one that needed comforting. Turns out, he’s not very good at playing that part. Turns out, when she’s laughing so hard her face turns red and tears stream down her cheeks he can feel her pain fly up into the air and dissolve around him and it’s the only thing he ever wants to feel again. So he makes her laugh and he wipes away her tears and he becomes the light one, the funny one, the charming one, and she sits on the sidelines with her dark hair and her piercings and her tattoos and her dark suits and her cigarettes held between pale fingers._

_She likes movies where cheerful, optimistic people fall in love with sarcastic, gloomy assholes. She giggles and pokes his chest with her toe and says, “Hey that’s us!” and he just smiles and plays the role she gives him. He’s a good soldier. He follows instructions well._

 

She’s a lawyer by the time he finds her, just a little underling, no one who ends up on the news or in any news articles. She does her best to stay busy but out of the limelight. She’s so good at her job most of the senior partners don’t even know she exists. 

She calls him _Rath_ the first time she sees him, standing with one foot in a hired car and the other on the sidewalk. Behind her there was a large water fountain and trees, a light breeze teasing at her dark hair. He calls her _Tess_ with a shout that sounds like pain being ripped from his chest and feels like hope. She cries into his arms on a sidewalk and there’s nothing he can do but stand there and hold her. 

(Been a while since he was allowed to do anything useful.)

She takes him home and keeps him there. She’s stronger than him. (They all always were.) He crawls at the walls. She finds him a job, she feeds him, she cuts his hair. He holds her when she cries. 

It feels like an even trade. 

(Death for death.  
Life for life.

One last survivor for the last survivor.)

 

_She likes to show him off, despite the fact that even after all of this time, he’s still not fully house-broken. He makes an ass of himself at parties, he always forgets to pull out her chair at restaurants, he insults her friends on accident, he never knows their anniversary and always buys the wrong thing, he always drinks out of the carton. She wrinkles her nose at him, hand on his forearm, and laughs up at him. He’s her big teddy bear, her wild puppy. Her friends think he’s wonderful. She likes it when he holds her purse and watches her try on clothes. She likes it when he walks too fast and she has to jog to keep pace with him, laughing and gasping at him. She likes it when he has to lift her up to reach something on a high shelf. She likes the way he reads thick novels and biographies in the park. She likes curling up into his lap, falling asleep while he reads or watches the big game._

_He likes the way her skin feels against his skin, like a new beginning._

_He likes being needed._


End file.
